Marquetry



' UNITED sTATEs PATENT oEEroE.

LOUIS FRANCIS GROEBL, OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA.

MARQUETRY.

Specication of Letters Patent No. 12,276, dated January 23, 1855.

To all whom t may concern.'

Be it known that I, LoUIs FRANCIS GROEBL, of the city and county of Philadelphia and State of Pennsylvania, have invented a new and useful Kind of Marquetry, in which all the adjoining edges of the different pieces of wood employed to form this kind of ornamental surface are interlocked and reciprocally support each other, but without being permanently fastened together or to the floor, so that a surface may be thus overlaid and uncovered at willV with almost the same facility as it could be covered and uncovered With a carpet. With marquet-ry as heretofore constructed this would be impossible, because each of the various pieces of which it was composed were glued or otherwise fastened permanently to thetloor on which it was laid, and necessarily so, for the reason that ea'ch piece merely abutted against the neXt without being in any way connected to it, so that unless fastened to the floor the several blocks would be constantly liable to be displaced, and instead of forming a smooth covering for the floor they would be scattered loosely upon it in confusion.

A further advantage of my improved method of forming marquetry is, that the grain of Wood in one block or piece may be placed at right angles to that of the adjoining piece and connected by tongues and grooves, so that the one will counteract the tendency of the other to warp, which, in this species of work is very great, especially as many of the pieces selected for their variety of grain and color are sawed out of knots, curls, or crotches of timber, and, as is well known are much more apt to warp than ordinary plain .straight grained woods.

quetry, Figure 1 represents a square; composed of thin boards (A and B) of a tasteful variety of shades, colors and grains, out into geometrical forms which reciprocally iit together to form the ornamental design represented. The edges of the larger pieces (A) are formed with grooves in all, those This conf figuration'of the edges of the pieces of wood is shown in Fig. 2, which represents a vertical section through Fig. l at the line (a b) in Fig. 3, which represents a plan, and in Fig. 4 which represents an edge view of one of the large pieces (A) in Fig. 5 which represents a plan, and in Fig. 6 which represents a section of the small piece (B). The forms and colors ofA the pieces admit of almost infinite diversication to represent the various ornamental devices which are ap-` propriate to this style of decoration.

Flooring boards are usually grooved and tongued on their two longest sides but are not grooved or tongued around theirentire perimeter as are the pieces which compose my improved marque'try. In this particular this ornamental covering for floors dif fers in its construction from flooring of all kinds, and for all purposes before known.

What I claim as my invention and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is-

The marquetry herein described, in which the different pieces of which it is composed, are firmly united at their adjoining edges, so as to secure the advantages herein described; but I make no claim to the invention of tonguing and grooving, nor to forming an ornamental design, or style of decoration,

by making combinations of wood of various forms or colors.

LOUIS FRANCIS GROEBL. Witnesses:

I-I. N. STEELEs, N. CALLAN. 

